smoke me like a cigarette
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: I'm not some filthy little habit you can keep behind closed doors, not your dirty little secret. /Regulus, Barty, and how the smoke swallowed them whole.


**A/N:** For the Last Ship Standing Competition on HPFC, using the prompts of something falling, worthlessness and the word glide_._

I don't even know. I realised I always describe Barty as tasting like cigarettes and then _this _happened. Do you know how hard it was not to say, "I wish I could quit you"? I am a strong woman.

Thanks to Teddy for looking this over!

* * *

You often lean against the dormitory door with a cigarette between your fingers, head back and eyes closed, blowing smoke rings, and I can never look away. The smoke curls from your lips, a perfect circle of death, and you let it fade into the air. I imagine how much of your breath ends up in my lungs, and I want to hate you.

See, there's only so much I can take with you before it feels like I've set fire to my own escape route - I could've gotten out of this, Barty, I could've followed Sirius, I could've saved myself, saved us both, I _could've_ - because the smoke that dances from my bones is the sweetest scent of wrong, isn't it, love?

It's all your fault. It always is.

And you still blow smoke rings and I still watch the flick of your wrist, the ash that tumbles from the tip of your burning cigarette, falling like dirty snow onto the floor. I wonder if that's what it'll be like when I finally fall. No bottomless drop, no heart stopping finish. Just the gentle drift of snowfall until I am a pile of nothingness at your feet and you won't even look at me anymore.

If you're going to burn me like this, I want you to smoke me like a cigarette.

I want you to breathe my poison into your lungs and taste me on your breath for days; I want to be the scent that clings to your robes, your hair, your skin; I want people to walk past you in the corridors and know that you're mine. Want them to notice me in the yellow of your fingers, in the ash of your breath. Want to turn your lungs black, leave a fine layer of dust and death in the cracks of your pulsing heart. Want you to know you can't hide me, not anymore.

I'm not some filthy little habit you can keep behind closed doors, not your dirty little secret.

I shouldn't have to lurk in your shadow and pretend I don't know where you end, that I haven't memorised the shape of your silhouette, haven't glided to your borders on the breeze of your ash-tainted breath one too many times. I shouldn't have to pull my scarf tighter around my neck so that the world won't see the bite marks you have left on my skin like cigarette burns on paper; stark against pale, pale white, and oh so wrong.

When are you going to give up, Barty? When are you going to let the flames consume you, let the paper of your body burn into smoke that lingers in the air like a prayer to a god who isn't listening? When are you going to watch me crumble like ash, watch me drift softly like autumn leaves - just as dead, just as _dead_ - and land in the fire of the fallen?

When are you going to tell me that you love me, that I'm worth following, that you would give up anything for me? When are you going to _mean _it?

I've spent too many nights falling into your bed and choking on cigarettes I don't even smoke. The least you could do is look at me when the others walk in.

Because I'm growing tired of the way you bow for the Dark Lord like you do not know the doubt in my chest, like I'm not the nicotine in your veins. How you heed his every command like it is your _honour_. We both know this has more to do with fear, with power, with your own fucking ego. There are other ways to be remembered, Barty. There are other ways to be saved.

I wish you would stop kissing the Mark on my arm like it's the most beautiful thing about me.

Because I hide mine like it's a self inflicted wound, like it's an ugly scar that I don't want anyone to know about, and you bare yours before the world, let them see the power you have and the flames at your fingertips that could bring them all down. We are so very different in that respect, aren't we?

And yet I know that when we're alone, you'll still inhale the scent of lust off the lines of my bones, still tremble under the fire of my touch, the flame of my lips that leave blackened bruises on the arc of your neck. You'll still wrap yourself around me and drown me in the hazy, heady cloud of your smoke and whisper your _I love you_s like apologies, dragging the tar from your lungs and the hatred from your heart and wrapping it around my wrists so that I will never leave you.

I want to say that I will never leave you.

But we both know that I will perish in the flames, be left blackened and ruined and shameless, and you'll still be blowing smoke rings at the sky and pretending you were never addicted.

(I hope you won't burn quite as brightly without me.)


End file.
